Chapter 11 #2
“And I’m, like, wicked grateful for that,” she replied, nodding. “But you’ve also been stalking me for a year and you took me to a secondary location against my will. It’s a big ask, demanding I trust you. It’s an even bigger one to want me to stay.”
Sloane flexed his claws behind his back. “I thought you’d decided already.”
“I’m deciding,” she clarified. “It’s a process.”
“You required freedom. I let you out of the bedroom. What more do you require?”
Cecilia gave him a long, patient look he’d often seen caregivers at the nursery give to misbehaving young. “Okay, well, first of all, being let out of the bedroom has a bad ring to it. You hear the implication, right? I need to know you hear that.”
When he said nothing, she let out another sigh. “Look, Sloane, I appreciate the thought behind all of this and the, uh, trouble you’ve gone to, but I can’t escape the reality that if I agree to stay with you for a while, I’m officially the stupidest person alive.”
“Because I’m dangerous,” he confirmed.
Cecilia didn’t respond right away. Curling her fingers around the edge of the countertop, she leaned forward slightly as she examined him. His skin tingled wherever she looked. Despite the visor, despite the layers of his armored kit, he felt naked under those searching eyes.
In a quieter voice, she said, “Yeah, you are. I’m probably gonna have nightmares about what you did to Duke for months. I’m terrified of you.”
His stomach sank.
She was right to fear him. Despite being the only person on the planet he could never harm, he was still the biggest threat to her.
One inhale without his helmet and she would never be free.
She’d never have the life she dreamed of.
She’d be the sole obsession of a monster who’d done things even her nightmares couldn’t conjure.
But is she free now?
Sloane tried to imagine letting her go. If he discovered there were no threats from the vampires and nothing else to save her from, he’d have no reason to keep her by his side.
She’d go back to her life and he’d return to watching her from afar, surrounded by pigeons and dreaming of what it’d be like to simply be near her.
I can’t, he realized, bile curdling in his belly. I’d come up with some other excuse. I’d find something else to keep her here. I can’t go back to watching.
Eventually he’d be found out. Eventually she’d find another mate. Eventually the control he’d clung to for so long would snap and he’d do it all over again.
He had to keep her. The question was how.
As Sloane stood there, watching her watch him, he realized that two obstacles stood in his way: Fracture and Cecilia’s fear.
The first could be handled easily enough, but the second… He had no idea how to make someone care for him. No one had before.
Desperate to know where to begin, he demanded, “How do I make you unafraid?”
Cecilia didn’t respond right away. She appeared to weigh something in her mind as she bit her lip.
After a long stretch of quiet, she ordered, “Come here.”
He followed her command instinctively, but he didn’t dare get too close.
Every inch between them was vital to keeping his self-control intact.
When they began to vanish, the need to rip off his helmet, to wrap his hands around her waist, to know what it would feel like to press the length of his body against the softness of her was unbearable.
But she wasn’t satisfied with the distance he tried to keep between them.
Cecilia pointed to the floor directly in front of her. “Here.”
Sloane could’ve sworn every nerve in his body came alive.
Energy unlike any he’d felt before zinged through his system as he slowly crossed the distance.
Suddenly the helmet that had always been a shield between him and the world felt suffocating.
The urge to tear it from his head made his breath shorten into sharp pants.
And then she opened her legs.
He didn’t make the choice to step between them. It was the most natural thing in the world to slot himself there.
Sloane didn’t know what it was like to come home, but he imagined it was something like when Cecilia welcomed him into that sacred space.
“I’m terrified of you,” she repeated, softer this time, as her hands sought out his arms.
His breath caught when she gently pulled them out from behind his back. Her fingers trailed down his forearms until they found his gloved hands. Guiding them onto the countertop beside her hips, she caged herself in with his much greater bulk.
Baffled, aroused, and desperate to understand her, he growled, “Then why do you want me closer?”
Those doe eyes stared up at him, knowing and beautiful and full of danger. “Because I’m pretty sure you’ll do whatever I say. And if I say don’t touch me, you won’t.”
It occurred to him that even if he couldn’t inhale her pheromones, his skin was still exposed to them. Perhaps that was why it felt like every inch of him was screaming for her touch.
Pulled in by her gravity, his head bowed until his temple was level with hers. “Is that an order?”
Cecilia’s hands hadn’t left his. Her fingertips hovered over his knuckles before they slid upward over the smooth leather. “Yes,” she answered, finding where the end of his gloves met the beginning of his sleeves.
Being hit with a cattle prod was less shocking than when her fingertips slid beneath his sleeves to touch his bare skin.
“Ah!” Sloane’s whole body stiffened. His claws sank into the countertop as the contact ricocheted through his body and rewrote something in his very cells.
Her touch vanished. “Sorry! Was that—”
“No,” he gasped, trying to regain some of his composure. “I’m not used to touch. Continue.”
A peculiar note entered her voice when she asked, “Not used to touch? What does that mean?”
“Elves don’t… do that,” he answered, chest tightening with that nameless not-quite-panic feeling. “Not with people who aren’t kin. And I don’t have kin.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Cecilia turned her head away to look closely at his hand. “I’ve never spent any time with elves.”
It wasn’t a surprise. Very few non-elves had.
After a thousand years of catastrophic population decline and in-fighting, they were a closed off people.
But things were changing now that Theodore Solbourne had taken over for his sister and chosen a witch for his mate.
They weren’t confined to their own people anymore.
If he were normal, he could’ve taken Cecilia as his consort proudly. He would’ve been the envy of all, with his perfect, fragile mate who pledged herself to the revered work of teaching young.
The fact that keeping her meant he couldn’t let the entire world know how lucky he was made that angry nerve throb in his chest.
Steeling himself, he rasped, “You can touch me. Continue.”
“And you won’t touch me?” There was a challenge in her voice, which was a dangerous thing. For an elf caught in the throes of the pull, a direct challenge and a chance to prove his worth were impossible to resist.
“Not until you give me the order,” he answered, heart racing.
“What if I never do?”
Her fingers played with the end of sleeves again. Chest rising and falling with quick, sanitized breaths, he replied, “Then I’ll never touch you.”
“How can I trust that, though? You could say anything.”
After a moment of thought, Sloane crouched down to reach into his right boot.
Cecilia watched him with confusion as his fingers curled around the hilt of his favorite knife.
He planned to rise up immediately, but he didn’t account for the way her seat on the countertop put her at the perfect height for him to bury his head between her thighs.
Sloane stared at the juncture between her legs for what felt like an eternity, his cock stiffening behind the slash-resistant fabric of his pants.
He’d never had much of a sexual drive before, but when he thought of what it’d be like to run his tongue along that tantalizing seam, it nearly obliterated the tenuous hold he still had on his control.
Biting his lip savagely beneath the visor, he forced himself back onto his feet.
“Here,” he grunted, holding the knife between them hilt-first.
Cecilia’s cheeks were flushed when she peered at it like she’d never seen a knife before. “You’re giving me a weapon?”
“Yes. To kill me.”
Cecilia leaned away from the knife so fast he nearly reached out to steady her. “Sloane, what the fuck?”
Breaking his own rule for just a moment, he grabbed her hand and forced her to curl her fingers around the hilt. “It’s obsidian — one of the only materials sharp enough to cut elvish skin on the first try. I know it works because I’ve used it. If I ever disobey your orders, kill me.”
He tilted his chin up, showing her the thin strip of skin exposed by the edge of his high collar. “Slice here. Don’t hesitate.”
Cecilia slid the knife out of its sheath. She stared at the black, shimmering blade with wide eyes.
After a moment of hesitation, she raised it to his throat.
The razor-sharp edge of the knife kissed that sliver of skin just below his helmet, but he didn’t move.
Every instinct in him urged him to stay still, to show her that he was at her mercy.
An elvish woman would’ve been just as deadly with her fangs at his throat, and he would’ve been just as aroused to know his mate held his life in her hands.
Someday, if he was lucky, he’d put his own fangs on her throat. She’d give him that trust, and he’d show her just how much he cherished it when he pinned her down with infinite care and slid his cock into the hot well of her body, forever sealing their bond.
But in that moment, he relished in the feeling of being the center of her world. There was no fear, no worry that she’d take the chance to slit his throat and run. His Cecilia had too much mercy in her for that.
It was that softness he so coveted, and what he’d defend with his life without hesitation.
Her voice trembled when she demanded, “If I told you to let me go right now or I’ll kill you, would you do it?”
“Yes,” he answered, throat bobbing dangerously close to the edge of the knife. “But I’d follow you.”
“And if I told you not to follow me?”
“I’d make sure you never saw me.”
“That isn’t obeying my orders,” she challenged.
Sloane placed his palms flat on the counter beside her hips. “I’ll follow them until they conflict with my duty to protect you. That has been and will always be my first priority.”
Cecilia let out a sound that was something like a huff. “Why me? Why do all of this for me, Sloane? I’m just a regular woman. I’m not special. What made you…”
“You talked to me,” he explained, voice rough behind the shield of his visor. “You touched me.”
Her lips parted. She stared at him for what felt like a long time, her brows bunched in a look that might’ve been understanding or it might’ve been pity. In a murmur, she confirmed, “And you don’t get a lot of touch.”
He breathed deeply. “And no one talks to me like you do.”
Her gaze dropped to his throat. The blade moved — not in a slicing motion, but downward, pushing the top of his collar until more of his skin was exposed.
“Purple,” she murmured, pulling the knife away. “Your skin is purple. I wondered, but I couldn’t see it properly before.”
Sloane watched her slip the knife back into its sheath. Tucking it into her pocket, she sat up straight and sucked in a deep breath.
“Okay,” she announced, like they’d settled something, and held her hand out. “Now give me your phone.”